Freedom and Grace: The First Full English Translation of Edith Stein's 1921 Essay on Freedom, Grace, and the Soul - Brossura

Stein St., Edith; Tucker, Eli

Brossura

ISBN 13: 9798177058474

Casa editrice: Independently published, 2026

Riassunto

• The first full English translation, checked line by line against the German
• A short note on the key words Stein uses
• A brief life of St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)

Can grace reach a soul that never asked for it? Can one person stand before God in another's place? And if God's mercy reaches for every soul, could any soul refuse it forever?

In 1921, in the months before her baptism, the philosopher Edith Stein worked out her answers in a short, searching essay she called Freedom and Grace. A gifted student of Edmund Husserl, she turned the rigorous methods of phenomenology on the deepest questions of the Christian life. This is the first time that essay has appeared in full in English.

Stein moves step by step from the everyday life of the soul, pushed and pulled by the world, to a soul set free and anchored "from above." Along the way she takes up:

• why the soul cannot find itself on its own, and what grace must do first
• how human freedom and divine grace work together in redemption
• how one person can carry another before God, and what this means for the Church
• the body, the sacraments, sin, and penance
• what faith really is, and how it differs from belief, conviction, and opinion

The essay also holds one of her most quoted passages, on the hope that God's all-merciful love reaches every soul. Could a soul close itself to that love for good? "As a possibility in principle, this cannot be ruled out," she writes. "In reality, it can become infinitely improbable." Hans Urs von Balthasar quoted from this passage in Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"?

Written on the threshold of her conversion, Freedom and Grace shows the mind that would go on to shape Catholic philosophy, and the soul that would give its life at Auschwitz in 1942. Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and named her a patron saint of Europe the following year.

This translation follows Stein's German closely and keeps her careful distinctions: soul and psyche, body and physical body, and the different kinds of believing she separates in Part Five. Where smooth English and her exact meaning pulled apart, her meaning won.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Independently published
• Data di pubblicazione: 2026
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 13: 9798177058474
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 90
• Contatto del produttore: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.it/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Lussemburgo